Please Stop Voting for Billy Dee Williams on Dancing With the Stars Just Because He’s Lando

Look, I’m going to level with you – I watch Dancing With the Stars. I could make a tired excuse that “it’s because of my fiancée” – but I could be doing all manner of things, and I choose to watch this dumb show. Don’t hate.

Lately, it seems like they’ve been trying to pull in the nerd crowd by getting the likes of Bill Nye the Science Guy to try and flail about with some tango-shaped thing on live TV. This season, they’ve gotten Billy Dee Williams – or Lando, to you and me.

And boy, does he suck.

Yes, they’re old, they’re awkward, and they have no earthly business being on this program, but at least Bill Nye tried. Billy Dee just has this glazed look over his eyes – like someone who’s coming off of Vicodin and slowly realizing exactly what he’s gotten himself into. For his first dance, he threw on some Star Wars music, had a couple Stormtroopers roaming around, flicked his arms out every now and then expected to just skate on by. He ended up with the lowest score out of all of the competition.

And he’s moving on to the next round.

It’s because Dancing With the Stars combines the judges’ scores with viewer votes – meaning that all you nerds out there are bumping off other contestants who actually give a shit about the competition and are actually trying to win.

It’s like how EA got voted “worst company” on The Consumerist’s poll two years in a row. You know, over such lightweights as Comcast (for repeatedly ruining the internet for millions of Americans) or Bank of America (for helping cause one of the worst recessions in the nation’s history).

One of the best parts of geekdom is being so passionate about something that we want to tell the world about it. It’s how comic books became an unstoppable box-office juggernaut – and how graphic novels became a legitimate story-telling medium. It’s why countless bedroom developers are becoming overnight sensations with their simple, yet mind-blowing indie games.

But it’s also how EA gets voted over BP (that company that may have spilled a tiny amount of oil off the Gulf Coast) – just because a few million gamers rally together to protest Mass Effect 3’s crappy ending.

We can be a forced to be reckoned with. But we need to learn to use our power for good, instead of evil.

I’m sorry – Lando’s just not a very good dancer. We need to let this one go.